Neoplatonic Aesthetics: Music, Literature, and the Visual Arts explores the idea of a Neoplatonic aesthetic, a philosophy of the arts based on the writings of Plato and the Neoplatonists – principally Plotinus, Proclus, Pseudo-Dionysius, Nicolas Cusanus, and Marsilio Ficino – and more contemporary philosophers – Stephen MacKenna, Iris Murdoch, Denman Ross, Jacques Derrida, and Hans Georg Gadamer. This book examines the artistic production of figures such as Gioseffe Zarlino, Fra Angelico, Leon Battista Alberti, Sandro Botticelli, Michelangelo, and Giorgio Vasari, and it formulates theoretical approaches to contemporary production based in the Neoplatonic philosophies.

The Editors: Liana De Girolami Cheney is Professor of Art History and Chairperson of the Department of Cultural Studies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. She is the author of Botticelli’s Neoplatonic Images; Quattrocento Neoplatonism and Medici Humanism in Botticelli’s Mythological Paintings; and The Paintings of the Casa Vasari. She is coauthor of Pre-Raphaelitism and Medievalism in the Arts; The Symbolism of Vanitas in the Arts; Readings in Italian Mannerism (Peter Lang, 1997/2004); Self-Portraits by Women Painters; Neoplatonism and the Arts; and Essays on Women Artists: «The Most Excellent». John Hendrix is Visiting Assistant Professor of Art and Architectural History at Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island. He is the author of Platonic Architectonics (Peter Lang, 2004), Architectural Forms and Philosophical Structures (Peter Lang, 2003), History and Culture in Italy, and The Relation Between Architectural Forms and Philosophical Structures in the Work of Francesco Borromini in Seventeenth-Century Rome. He is coauthor of Neoplatonism and the Arts.